Don't miss the early bird registration for the ASNE-APME conference Sept. 15-17 at the Hyatt Regency in the heart of downtown Chicago. The Associated Press Photo Managers will also be part of the conference.

The early bird registration fee of $199 is available to members of APME and ASNE till Friday, April 18.

This will be the first joint conference of the nation's top editors. The theme: ASNE/APME 2014: Fast Forward

APPM will focus on innovation and digital storytelling with workshops on multimedia storytelling, onsite sports picture editing and social media approaches. It will partner with APME for a joint session on interactive story form and how multiple layers of words and visuals play a role in the digital experience.

Other conference highlights:

* We will celebrate winners of the APME Journalism Excellence Awards and ASNE Awards at a special lunch Tuesday. On Wednesday, we will meet again for lunch with a keynote speaker. Tickets to both lunches can be purchased at registration.

* We'll party together Monday night at the opening reception and auction at the historic Tribune Tower, sponsored by the Chicago Tribune. The silent and live auctions will offer sports tickets, vacation retreats, jewelry, autographed books and much more.

Two entertainment events are offered Tuesday night. You can:

* Cruise the Chicago River and enjoy the beautiful skyline at a reception on the Mystic Blue, sponsored by the Illinois Press Association and the Illinois Associated Press Media Editors.

* Or take in a baseball game with other editors and see the Chicago Cubs play the Cincinnati Reds at Wrigley Field.

We are working on organizing pre-conference workshops Monday morning, Sept. 15, and post-conference workshops Thursday, Sept. 18. Details to come.

Register now: Early bird registration is available at $199 for members of APME and ASNE until Friday, April 18. After that, the registration fee will be $250 for members of APME and ASNE and $350 for nonmembers. There are special rates for APME’s Regents, retired editors, spouses and students. Click: http://www.apme.com/event/2014convention.

Book your hotel room:

A block of rooms is reserved at the Hyatt Regency until Aug. 29 for only $189 per night. Make a reservation online: https://aws.passkey.com/event/10816539/owner/2135/home. Or call the hotel directly at 312-565-1234 and mention the block of rooms reserved for APME and ASNE.

The shooting was part of a surge in violence targeting foreigners in the run-up to presidential elections, a pivotal moment in Afghanistan's troubled recent history that promises to be the nation's first democratic transfer of power.

Niedringhaus, 48, who had covered conflict zones from the Balkans in the 1990s to Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, died instantly of her wounds.

Gannon, 60, who for many years was the news organization's Afghanistan bureau chief and currently is a special correspondent for the region, was shot three times in the wrists and shoulder. After surgery, she was in stable condition and spoke to medical personnel before being flown to Kabul.

Niedringhaus and Gannon had worked together repeatedly in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, covering the conflict from some of the most dangerous hotspots of the Taliban insurgency. They often focused on the war's impact on Afghan civilians, and they embedded several times with the Afghan police and military, reporting on the Afghan government's determination to build up its often ill-equipped forces to face the fight against militants.

Gannon, who had sources inside the Taliban leadership, was one of the few Western reporters allowed into Afghanistan during the militant group's rule in the 1990s.

The two journalists were traveling in a convoy of election workers delivering ballots in the eastern city of Khost, under the protection of Afghan security forces. They were in their own car with a translator and an AP Television News freelancer waiting for the convoy to move after arriving at the heavily guarded security forces base in eastern Afghanistan.

A unit commander identified by authorities as Naqibullah walked up to the car, yelled "Allahu Akbar" – God is Great – and fired on them in the back seat with his AK-47, said the freelance videographer, who witnessed the attack, which left the rear door of the car riddled with bullet holes. The officer then surrendered to the other police and was arrested.

In a memo to staff, AP President Gary Pruitt remembered Niedringhaus as "spirited, intrepid and fearless, with a raucous laugh that we will always remember."

"Anja is the 32nd AP staffer to give their life in pursuit of the news since AP was founded in 1846," he wrote. "This is a profession of the brave and the passionate, those committed to the mission of bringing to the world information that is fair, accurate and important. Anja Niedringhaus met that definition in every way."

Niedringhaus joined the AP in 2002, and while based in Geneva worked throughout the Middle East as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2005, she was part of the AP team that won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography for coverage of Iraq, and was awarded the Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women's Media Foundation, among many journalistic honors. In 2006-07, she studied at Harvard University under a Nieman Fellowship.

"What the world knows about Iraq, they largely know because of her pictures and the pictures by the photographers she raised and beat into shape," said AP photographer David Guttenfelder. "I know they always ask themselves, `What would Anja do?' when they go out with their cameras. I think we all do."

"She truly believed in the need to bear witness," said Santiago Lyon, AP vice president and director of photography.

Niedringhaus captured what war meant to her subjects: an Afghan boy on a swing holding a toy submachine gun, a black-clad Iraqi giving a bottle to her baby as she waits for prisoners to be released, a U.S. Marine mourning the loss of 31 comrades.

Others showed life going on among the killing: a Canadian soldier with a sunflower stuck in his helmet, a young girl testing her artificial limbs, while her sister teasingly tries to steal her crutches, a bearded Afghan man and grinning boy listening to music on an iPod borrowed from German soldiers.

At an exhibit of her work in Berlin in 2011, Niedringhaus said: "Sometimes I feel bad because I can always leave the conflict, go back home to my family where there's no war."

Niedringhaus started her career as a freelance photographer for a local newspaper in her hometown in Hoexter, Germany, at age 16. She worked for the European Press Photo Agency before joining the AP and had published two books.

Gannon, a Canadian journalist based in Islamabad, has covered Afghanistan and Pakistan for the AP since the mid-1980s. A former Edward R. Murrow fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, she is the author of a book on the country, "I Is for Infidel: From Holy War to Holy Terror: 18 Years Inside Afghanistan." She also was awarded the Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women's Media Foundation, in 2002.

Niedringhaus drew praise Friday from battlefields to the White House. She was honored at a United Nations briefing, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, tweeted condolences. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said she and Gannon were in President Obama's thoughts and prayers.